Hotels in America
by Roadie-N60
Summary: "Helena had learned that one of the few blessings of the 21st century was that even unpleasant bars tended to be stocked with moderate-quality English dry gin." Extended missing scene from 2x07 "For the Team." Bering & Wells.
1. Chapter 1

**The idea for this came from a PM exchange with tantedrago awhile ago where we talked about how it seems like we see a lot of seductive!Helena and angsty!Helena and a decent amount of evil/crazy!Helena but very little lonely!Helena, even in season 2 fics where she was probably lonely quite a lot.**

**So here's my shot at it. It's an extended missing scene from 2x07, "For The Team" and will be two chapters long. (Disclaimer: I didn't rewatch the episode before writing this, so I apologize for any continuity screw-ups). MaLu, this one's for you.**

**Edit: belatedly noticed an internal continuity error, so I fixed it.**

* * *

It was an airport hotel, which meant they paid the price of a mid-rate hotel in other places for a shady dump that had strands of other people's hair still stuck in the bathtub and required you to bring your own shampoo.

Still, it meant that Myka and Claudia had been able to book their own rooms within budget—something that Myka insisted upon every time she travelled with Claudia, who liked to stay up and channel surf long after Myka preferred to be into her second REM cycle.

Claudia was fine, she said. Copacetic. Sympatico. Super, one-hundred-percent A-OK. Just, you know, tired, and in need of a shower and possibly to burn these clothes because there was no way she'd ever manage to wash out the smell of sweat.

"I should stay with you tonight," Myka said. "Just… you know. To make sure there aren't any lingering side-effects."

"Really, Myka," Claudia sighed, "you don't need to do that. I'm fine."

"Claudia—"

"Okay, to be blunt? I'm gonna go in there and take a long shower and then I want to sleep naked like a starfish on top of the blankets so I can have a break from the feeling of, just, like, clothes, and stuff, sticking to me. And don't take it personally but this?" Claudia gestured toward herself, her hand dropping down her profile once, "is need-to-know, and you kinda don't."

Myka pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes, then she shook her head and chuckled a little. "I'm staying here until you get out of the shower," she said. "And I want you to make sure your Farnsworth is set to my frequency and I want you to keep it where you can reach it overnight and if anything, _anything_, feels even the _slightest_ bit off—"

"I'll call you," Claudia finished. "yup, got it."

"Okay," Myka said.

Myka grabbed the remote and channel-surfed for a few minutes while Claudia showered. Nothing worth watching, really. Football, basketball, infomercials, one of those reality shows about a pawn shop and another that looked like it was probably part of that "Real Housewives" series. She tried CNN for news, but found Crossfire instead. She hated that show and its asinine polemics. Eventually, she settled on some low-budget made-for-TV movie about aliens invading Manhattan.

After awhile the water shut off. A few minutes later, Claudia cracked the door.

"Hey, Myka?" she said, "I was serious about the naked thing, and the towels in here are sized for orcs instead of humans, so…"

"Okay," Myka said. She stood and picked up her briefcase and the neutralizer canister with the spoon inside. "Really, Claudia, if _anything…"_

"I got it. Don't worry. Go get some sleep."

"You too, Claudia. Goodnight."

In her own room across the hall, Myka hung her coat in the closet and pulled a folder out of her briefcase so she could begin to fill out her reports. Fifteen minutes later, she had filled out her name and the date, and had watched probably a dozen planes circle in to land at the nearby airport.

Her bag leaned against her foot, with the hard cylinder of HG Wells's grappler resting on her instep.

Myka tried, and failed, not to imagine how this day would have played out if HG hadn't suddenly appeared. Her mind lingered there, and lingered. And lingered. And then Claudia's sweaty face became intermittently eclipsed with another face, older and male with blood dripping down his forehead.

She swallowed hard, clenched her fingers tighter around her pen and moved her hand to the top of the empty box that read "Description of artifact," but her fist twitched and shook and she realized that writing… wasn't going to happen.

If HG hadn't shown up, she'd have another life on her conscience.

Did that make her the luckiest secret service partner ever, or the unluckiest?

She rolled her neck and shoulders and then tipped her head back, letting the weight and the angle pull her airway open. She really, really wanted a drink.

It was only then that it occurred to her that she could have one. She never would, when she was travelling with Pete, but now….

The hotel had a grimy bar, and even the grimiest of hotel bars should be able to serve her some kind of decent whiskey.

\\

Hotels in America, Helena thought, were one part of life in 2013 that paled in comparison to the nineteenth-century English counterparts she'd left behind. Massive, impersonal, ill-decorated monstrosities, all.

Her shoulder ached.

When she first arrived in the dismal room, she lined the ice bucket with one of the plastic bags lying beside it and filled it from the noisy machine in the alcove by the elevator.

She sat, now, on the bed furthest from the door. She tied a knot in the bag of ice and wrapped the whole thing in a rough hand towel, and deposited it on her shoulder.

Helena was reasonably strong for her size, but her size was still relatively slight. Agent Bering's body weight combined with her own had to total somewhere around eighteen stone, she reasoned. That was a lot of weight to put on one joint. It was no wonder, really, that it was so sore.

The curtains were open, and from her darkened room, Helena could see the flashing lights of airplanes circling over the nearby airport.

Thrilling things, airplanes. She had been disappointed to learn that a pair of nameless American brothers had been the ones to first build and patent the functioning flying machine, ahead of Nikola. She had asked MacPherson, once, how the blasted contraptions stayed aloft; he had settled her in front of a computer and instructed her to "google" the word "aerofoil." The physics of it were so simple, really, she endured several days' frustration that she hadn't come up with the design herself.

The remote control for the television sat on the bedside table. She reached for it and pressed the red button to switch the device on; the screen lit up with an advertisement for the hotel's various amenities ("Did you know your room key gives you 24-hour access to our fitness center on the second floor?", "Forgot something? Don't worry! All basic toiletries are available for purchase from our front desk!"). The channel above that showed children's animated programmes. The next one showed one of those strange dramas that wasn't a drama, where it appeared someone had simply recorded the goings-on of a group of individuals' daily lives—or, rather, facsimiles of daily lives, as the element of performance never lurked far beneath the surface. She kept clicking: weather report, advertisements, athletics, more athletics, and—a science fiction film! This might be interesting. She set the control down beside herself and sunk back against the pillows she had stacked against the headboard, readjusting the ice pack as she settled in. Ten minutes later, though, it became clear that this film was more about the spectacle of humans fighting aliens than about any of the mental and philosophical exercises that science fiction could so adeptly engage.

She picked up the remote again. Advertisements, advertisements, news report. Against her better judgment, she lingered there long enough to hear a handful of commentators banter on the impacts of the explosion of an offshore oil rig on near the southern coast of the United States, and then to move on to discuss the implications of a suicide bombing that had taken place that day in Jerusalem.

Destroying everything, humanity was. Some things never changed. Never would, apparently. She turned the television off and picked up her book from the nightstand – _Lady Chatterley's Lover_, selected from a "read banned classics!" shelf she'd found in a bookshop a few days earlier. It didn't take long for her to figure out why it had been banned three decades into her bronzing. The gritty sensuality and harsh language oscillated between discomfiting and, well, a little bit thrilling.

It had been such a very, very long time since she had experienced intimacy of any significance, after all.

Helena's vision blurred over the page as she remembered the feeling of Agent Bering's body against hers, just for that short moment as they swayed above the roadway. She hadn't meant to… well, to _notice_, really, the parts of their bodies that touched each other. The firmness of the Agent's grip, the solidity of her torso. Such women had been terribly hard to find in Helena's previous life.

The ice, somewhat melted now, didn't want to stay perched on her shoulder. Helena gave up on the book. For several long minutes, she watched the circling lights of the planes through the glass.

Footsteps echoed down the hallway beyond the door, accompanied by the drone of one of the brilliant little wheeled suitcases that had become so very popular.

Then thick, cotton-mouthed silence, like a tin can full of sand.

Helena shook her head, rolled her neck, flexed her fingers just to remember they would move. She lifted the half-melted ice from her shoulder and dumped it in the bathroom sink, and then shrugged out of her jacket – damp, now, from the condensation on the bag—and into a different one. This hotel did, if nothing else, have what looked like a rather unpleasant bar on the ground floor, and Helena had learned that one of the few blessings of the 21st century was that even unpleasant bars tended to be stocked with moderate-quality English dry gin.

\\

It was the kind of bar that kept the lights dim in the hope that customers wouldn't notice the chips in the fake wood paneling covering most of the furniture. The dartboards hung crooked and there were marks on the linoleum bartop that were probably left over from when it had been legal to smoke in here. The TVs were tuned to a basketball game and a poster featuring the Tamalpais University football schedule hung by the door; the neon "open" sign in the window facing the street flickered like it was about to blow a fuse.

Myka leaned, more than sat, on the stool by the end of the bar, one heel hooked over the rung, while she sipped on a double Jameson, rocks.

The bartender looked like her fourth-grade teacher—not in a good way—and she was glad she was going home tomorrow so she could wash the film from the bartop off the shirt, but the liquor was cold and familiar and savoring it offered an easy resting place for her attention.

When the gentleman—a little older than her, well-dressed, and not unattractive—sat down next to her, she didn't mind, at first. Talking was better than thinking on nights like this, as long as she was careful not to create the impression she had any, you know, _intentions_ or anything.

He took the lack of outright rejection as an excuse to begin talking about his recent divorce. His euphemisms for his ex-wife were less than creative and all delivered, awkwardly, as though he could seduce Myka by making her an ally against a woman she'd never met.

Myka refused, on principle, to down her drink and walk out just to escape him. So she sipped at it, avoided eye contact, and responded to him only as much as necessary to avoid being overwhelmingly rude.

\\

Helena was halfway through the entrance to the bar when she noticed Agent Bering propped on one of the stools, talking to a man Helena had never seen before.

Well—listening to, perhaps.

Barely even that, actually.

Even here, from across the room, Helena could read the straight line of Agent Bering's spine, the way her weight rested more on her foot on the floor than on the barstool behind her, the way she let her hair fall between her own face and her… interlocutor's. The good Agent was clearly not interested in this conversation. The gentleman, however, proceeded apace with his words, his head and shoulders turned toward her, gesturing intently to emphasize his points. When he leaned over and bumped her shoulder with his, she smiled tightly in a way that failed to reach her eyes and then shifted away from him.

A moment later, he reached over reached over and rested his fingers on her wrist. This, apparently, was the line, crossed: Bering picked his hand up with two fingers and deposited it back on the bartop.

"Don't take this the wrong way," she said, "I'm sorry you've gone through such a shitty divorce and everything, but I'm not looking for—I'm just, I'm not interested."

The man had his back to Helena, so she couldn't hear his reply; she saw Agent Bering's eyes widen, and then narrow, indignantly. "You should pay your tab and walk away from me right now," she said.

The man began to say something else, and Bering interrupted him: "What, did I—did I _stutter_ or something?"

Helena couldn't help but smile, just a little, at that particular rendition of that particular sentence. She saw the bartender begin to make her way across to them from where she had been standing near the cash register.

Agent Bering met the man's next rebuttal with an open-handed slap to the bar-top followed by retrieval of her credentials from her pocket.

"Look, buddy, I'm a law-enforcement officer of the type that's never off-duty and always armed. Get out of my space."

The man shrank back and raised his hands by his shoulders in a defensive gesture. The bartender had frozen in place when she saw the badge, but she came into movement as it was stowed safely away in Agent Bering's pocket.

"Everything okay here?" The bartender asked. "I think you've had enough, sir. Why don't you just head back up to your room and let the good officer enjoy her drink."

"I'm pretty sure he still needs to pay," Bering said.

The bartender shrugged, propping herself on the bartop. "Well, I think we can let that go if he's willing to just—"

"No, ma'am," Agent Bering said. "He's going to settle his tab like the law-abiding citizen he is. Right, Brendan?"

By this point, Helena had been standing half in the door for a minute or two, but she couldn't bring herself to walk closer or to leave this scene. It thrilled her to no end to watch this happen: a woman enforcing order and decorum in a public space without being accused of being meddlesome, or something else equally patronizing.

Thus it was that the Agent's eyes found her as they followed the man—Brendan?—out of the bar after he completed his payment. They narrowed, slightly, before she turned back to face the bar and took a sip of her whiskey.

Well, Helena supposed, she might as well say hello.

"Neanderthals," Helena said, as she leaned on her forearms on the bar-top in the space Brendan had vacated.

Agent Bering exhaled in a quick laugh and swirled the dregs of her drink. Helena's gaze was drawn to the shape of her fingers, long and defined and strong—almost androgynous by the standards of Helena's previous life, with their short, unpolished nails and visible, corded tendons—as they curved around the tumbler. Water coalesced from the condensation on the glass, around the edges of her fingertips.

"You're stalking me," Bering said. "That's illegal in this century."

Helena smiled. "Come now, darling. Stalking? Even out-of-time geniuses of questionable intent do sometimes crave a bed to sleep in."

"And you just happened to pick the same dump where Claudia and I are staying." Myka turned to look at Helena, an eyebrow cocked, glass dangling from her fingers.

"Well, it makes things simpler, doesn't it. How is the young miss Donovan recovering?"

"She's fine. And don't think I didn't notice that redirect you just pulled."

Helena looked down at her hands, clasped together on the sticky bar surface, and decided to gamble on honesty.

"I followed you here from the factory," she said.

"From the factory," Myka repeated. "Okay. Why?"

"I feel I have adapted quite rapidly and well to this new era, all things considered, Agent Bering," Helena said, "but it has been… exhausting. When I said I had no tether here, I meant it. No face in this century is better-known to me than yours. I was overcome with the desire to share a roof with someone familiar, even if you never knew I was here. I never intended for you to find out that I was here, actually, but it appears we both sought the same refuge at the end of a long day."

Helena gestured toward Agent Bering's glass.

Myka smiled a little, softly. Loneliness was an emotion she could certainly understand.

Helena's dark eyes found hers and Myka noticed the subtle shift of pupils dilating, brows unfurrowing. Helena's lips parted and quirked, just a little, and Myka's eyes lingered on them, just a fraction too long. And Helena smiled.

And then the moment broke. Helena turned to face forward across the bar again. She cleared her throat loudly and pulled her fingers through her hair.

Myka downed the last of her drink. "So," she said, "I can owe you. Did you mean that, or do you just have a flair for the dramatic?"

"I suppose we shall both find out when, or if, I call to collect on the debt, shan't we?" Helena smirked.

"I suppose so," Myka replied, as she set a few bills on the bar and weighted them with her empty glass. She stood up and walked toward the door. By unspoken agreement Helena followed. They crossed through the hotel lobby in silence and Myka pressed the call button for the elevator.

"Your room, not mine," Myka said, as the elevator dinged its arrival.

"As you wish, darling," Helena said, following Myka into the car. She pressed the button for the fourth floor.


	2. Chapter 2

**Here, have a little more porn than is strictly necessary (thought it's still got plenty of character development and stuff, I promise). I mean, who doesn't like a little gratuitous porn in their fic, right?**

* * *

The doors slowly slid closed and then Helena was pressed into the wall by Myka's firm, warm body, strong hands at her hips and lips seeking out her own. Helena's hands travelled to Myka's shoulders, her neck, her remarkable mane of curls, and stayed there, framing the curve of her skull. Myka kissed like no woman Helena had ever kissed before: confident and assertive but responsive, leveraging her slight advantage in height to tip Helena's head ever-so-slightly back into the wall's rough upholstery, a hint of whiskey burning on her tongue. She slid her palms up Helena's sides inside her open jacket, over her shirt, and Helena trembled a little, sensitive and thrilled, as the heels of Myka's hands brushed the sides of her breasts.

The elevator lurched to a halt with a moderately-unsettling dropping sensation and Myka quickly stepped back before the door opened. She ran a tongue over her lower lip and chased it with her teeth. Helena led them out of the elevator and down the hallway; Myka stood beside her, hands tucked in her own back pockets, while Helena slipped her key card out of her pocketbook and swiped it through the reader with square, precise motions. It had taken her several attempts to get the hang of these key-card locking mechanisms. The first time she'd encountered one, she'd ended up just using the card to force the lock.

Helena turned the doorknob and paused, glancing over at Myka beneath a cocked eyebrow and above half a smile as she tucked the key and pocketbook back into her jacket. Myka's eyebrows raised and she pursed her lips, bemusedly. Helena smirked back and pushed the door open; Myka's fingertips brushed the small of her back as she followed Helena into the room.

The moment the door clicked shut, Myka was upon her again, spinning her and pressing her back against the door. Helena was thrilled to comply, opening her mouth to Myka's tongue and hooking her fingers in Myka's belt loops as the fingers of one of Myka's hands combed into her hair and cradled her nape and the other splayed flat against the door outside Helena's shoulder. Helena tilted her hips forward as she pulled on Myka's waistband until their pelvises were pressed firmly together; Myka smiled into their kiss and shifted, just a little, so their thighs could interlock and—

"_Oh_," Helena gasped, tilting her head back, because _that_ was delightfully intimate, and if she were to be perfectly—ah, _ah_—perfectly honest, it pressed the slick evidence of her body's overwhelming desire up against her skin.

Myka's lips were on her neck, now, and her throat, but Helena didn't notice the quick work Myka's hands had made of the buttons on her shirt until she felt cool fingers against the curve of her ribs, thumbs tracing the arc of the wire of her bra and then peeking underneath to stroke soft skin.

Her fingers fisted in curly hair as she arched forward from the door into that blessed touch.

Myka grinned and chuckled into the pulse of Helena's neck. "Impatient?" she teased.

"Not hardly," Helena replied before untangling one hand, grabbing the center of her own bra and pulling it up her chest, the band bunching in her underarms.

"Well, alright then," Myka breathed, bending to wrap her lips and tongue around a newly-exposed nipple, her hands still pushing Helena's ribcage back and up against the door.

Helena's eyes fluttered closed at the exquisite pull of Myka's mouth, the tease and flutter of her tongue against skin that had been warmed by nothing but clothing and bronze in well over a century. Her breath tripped in stutters and pants, her hips twitched, and when Myka switched to the other side she couldn't help but release a sound—a moan—that would have embarrassed her in her previous life but now, as she felt Myka's hand slide down to cup her backside she found she couldn't care less about propriety.

"Myka," she breathed. "Myka."

Myka hadn't been with a woman in years—not since FLETC, where she'd somehow ended up in a brief, secret, and mind-bendingly torrid relationship with a fellow trainee named Jessie. She'd wondered, then, if feeling a woman come apart under your touch always brought this thrilling feeling of power and control, or if it was just something about Jessie; she had her answer, now, as she felt H.G.'s body—_H.G. Wells' _beautiful, time-traveling, genius body—hum under her fingers and tongue like a live wire, felt her knees tremble and twitch and occasionally bump the insides of Myka's bent thighs, heard her choke out her name like a plea. And so Myka saw no need to prolong things further; she kept her tongue touched to the sensitive tip of Helena's nipple as she unfastened the front of painted-on jeans and slid her hand inside.

Helena was warm and wet and slick against Myka's fingers, and her arms folded convulsively around Myka's neck when Myka softly dragged a fingernail along her clit. Helena's hips jerked, pressed forward against the inside of Myka's forearm and Myka responded by straightening, joining her lips to Helena's in a deep, open-mouthed kiss while two fingers slid slightly back and then pressed in, as far as they would go.

"_Oh_," Helena breathed into Myka's mouth. "Oh, Myka, that feels…"

Myka leaned forward, tucked her lips against the curve of H.G.'s shoulder and her chest—still fully-clothed—against H.G.'s bare torso, between the halves of her unbuttoned shirt and jacket and beneath the haphazardly bunched-up bra. Then she began to move, slowly at first, and then faster, deeper, as H.G.'s breaths came in staccato pants in her ear and her hips rolled with every stroke, and Myka made sure the heel of her hand caught H.G.'s clit every time. It was tight and awkward inside those fitted jeans but that was fine—this was a you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours fuck, this was Myka suppressing her grief and fears and memories for awhile and it was H.G.—well, Myka wasn't sure what this was, for H.G. They weren't in Myka's room, so this couldn't be about wanting to sneak a look in her briefcase. And she'd seen the way H.G. had looked at her in the bar, and all of her actions since then left no doubt regarding the mutual desire being addressed—that, and the little sounds she was making in Myka's ear, the fingernails digging into her back through her shirt, the leg curled around the back of her thigh pulling her closer, closer. So Myka threw the weight of her hip into her hand until H.G.'s entire body slid up and down against the laminate surface of the door with every thrust. There were H.G.'s teeth in the side of her neck, and then there was a cry – a harsh one, a little broken, and a hand that closed around Myka's wrist.

"Myka," H.G. gritted near her ear. "Slow—slow down. Please."

Myka blinked, glanced down and realized she had actually been lifting H.G. almost off her feet. Gently, she lowered her to the floor and slipped her hand free, though she kept it tucked inside H.G.'s clothes, resting against the low curve of her abdomen.

"I'm sorry," Myka said, her breath calming. "Got a little carried away, I guess."

"No need to apologize, darling." H.G. tipped her head forward until her cheek came to rest on Myka's shoulder, her breath coming in deep pants. "Normally, I'd quite like it, I should think. It's only that it's been quite some time, and my body… Well. Perhaps you can imagine."

Myka blinked twice, then pressed her brow forward against the door with a groan. "Oh, god, this is the first time for you since… since you…"

"Since the bronze, yes."

Myka slid her wet hand around until it rested over the curve of H.G.'s hip, elastic of her underwear cutting a sharp line across the back of her hand. "I'm an asshole," she said, shaking her head against the door. "Your first in a century and I go at you like some kind of animal."

"You're hardly an _asshole_, darling." The profanity that people bandied about so casually in these times, Helena thought. Honestly. "You wanted something. I wanted it, too." She slid her hand up Myka's neck so that her fingers could comb into her hair, and coaxed her head back from the door, so that with a turn of her head, their eyes could meet.

"I still want it," Helena continued, with a half-smile, "You are _devilishly_ attractive."

An answering blush crept up Myka's neck from beneath the deep V of her shirt collar, its top buttons undone. Helena's gaze was drawn to the pinked skin, to the bare shadow of the curve between Myka's breasts just barely hidden. Her fingers slid down Myka's neck, across her collarbone, and down her sternum, until they fell against the topmost fastened button. She leaned forward, caressing Myka's cheek with her own until her lips found a soft earlobe, still teasing the soft skin of her chest.

"So while I want to be able to walk tomorrow—" she rolled her hips into Myka's—"I would still very much like to continue what we've begun."

Myka bit her lip just in time to catch a moan that threatened from her throat, and she nodded. Her hands slid to the safe territory of H.G.'s waist as she stepped back, wordlessly pulling them both to the edge of the nearest bed. Perched there, Myka fumbled her Farnsworth and cell phone out of her pocket and set them within easy reach on the nightstand. She pushed H.G.'s shirt and jacket off her shoulders and down her arms; then she reached around and unfastened the tangled bra to slide it off as well. She trailed her fingers over the slightly warm and swollen curve of a right shoulder ("A mild injury by Warehouse standards, I'd say," H.G. murmured) and then slipped to tug H.G.'s fingers to the buttons of her vest.

A few shed clothes, a push and twist later, Helena found herself pressed between rough, packed-down hotel pillows and soft, warm skin, the loose ends of thick curls ghosting over her chest as Myka—slower, as promised—slid down, down, her tongue tracing the curve of a breast, her teeth flirting with a stiff nipple, and kept travelling lower. Mesmerized, Helena propped herself up on her elbows to watch those long, square fingers hook inside her waistband and skin her trousers from her legs; kept watching while Myka stood at the foot of the bed and trailed her gaze from Helena's bare feet all the way to her eyes.

"God, H.G, you're…you're—"

"When I'm naked, darling, I'd much rather be 'Helena,' if you don't mind." Helena offered a crooked grin. "'H.G.,' in this era, makes me think of my brother."

Myka laughed through nervous lips and glanced down at the floor, incredulous. "Helena. Okay." She shook her head and muttered, " I can't believe that I'm about to go down on the mother of science fiction."

It wasn't a turn of phrase that Helena was familiar with, but she had learned by now how to half-cock an eyebrow into a facial expression that managed to convey co-conspiracy without needing to express understanding. H.G.'s eyebrows climbed further up her forehead, though, when Myka hooked her thumbs into her own waistband and bent over double to push them off.

"Myka…" she trailed off, her throat suddenly cracked and dry. Myka was long, and lean, and muscular, conveying poise that reflected well-honed self-control more than well-practiced decorum. As Myka slipped between her knees and began to crawl back up the bed, Helena's fingers flexed against the bedspread, imagining the firm resistance of the flesh of Myka's buttocks, the shallow groove of her spine, and—

_Oh_, dear God, that was her _tongue_.

Helena's shoulders gave out and she collapsed back against the pillows as Myka's palms pressed at her inner thighs, her tongue sliding over and into her, sucking and prodding and teasing. Within moments Helena had clapped a hand over her own mouth, her hips pressing up into Myka's lips and her heels digging hard into the mattress.

Myka had always enjoyed doing this and she committed to it fully, losing herself in the wet and the taste, filling her eyes with the sight of the arching body above her and her hands with the feel of straining muscles. H.G.'s – _Helena's_, she corrected—hips surged off the bed and Myka pressed them back down with a forearm across her abdomen. She shifted ever so slightly northward to wrap her lips where Helena liked them best and then she slipped her other hand lower, cradling her own chin in her palm as she slowly pushed two fingers inside. Helena moaned and then Myka did, too, low and deep in her throat.

If Myka had any lingering memory of her day, of the fear and sadness she'd felt a mere hour earlier, it was gone now, buried under a tidal wave of sensory input, deafened by the gasps escaping from between Helena's tightly-clenched lips and fingers.

Helena was adrift, her body no longer her own, helpless to do anything but fist one hand in curly hair and the other between her teeth as Myka's fingers and tongue pushed her to the very edge, even her breaths coming in pants timed to match Myka's thrusts.

Then Myka shifted, lifted herself up onto her knees to change her angle so she could combine quick flicks of her tongue against Helena's clitoris and deep, slow strokes of her fingers, and Helena leapt and fell, pelvis grinding down into the bed as her chest and torso arced up in blissful release.

Helena collapsed against the bed, panting, her body tensing slightly as Myka slipped her fingers free. It had been so long, so very long, since she had felt the arms of a lover, let alone spent under one's touch, and she rolled into Myka as Myka crawled up and stretched out alongside her, wiping her lips against the back of her hand.

"I can see again," Helena murmured into Myka's shoulder.

Myka chuckled and slipped an arm around her back.

For several long moments, they lay still. Myka felt Helena's breathing return to normal, her heart rate slowing.

Helena shifted onto her back and ran both hands over her face, once. She stretched, enjoying the lethargic pull in her muscles, and then let her body sink into the mattress. "I suppose we can consider the grappler repaid, then," she said.

Myka bolted upright. The grappler? Was this about the goddamn _grappler_? Had she just fucked a woman in repayment for a gift? Or—_god_, had she basically taken payment for sex?

Myka grabbed the pillow beside her and used it to cover herself as best she could when she shifted to glare down at H.G. "Dammit, H.G., was this really about the—"

Helena looked up at her, wide-eyed, from the pillow, and immediately, the venom dissipated. Myka scanned Helena's pulse, her wide eyes, the flare of her nostrils and the part of her lips. She read several emotions: surprise, nervousness, embarrassment—a lot of embarrassment. And beneath it all, in the darkness of those black irises, sadness.

"Did you really think this was about the grappler?" Myka asked, gently.

"Well, I…" Helena shrugged. "It seemed logical, given that was our last topic of conversation at the bar. And I can't say I've had many opportunities to learn about twenty-first century sexual economics."

Myka laughed a little. "Twenty-first century sexual economics," she repeated, lying down again. "I think it's fair to say that if anyone wants to use sex as a form of trade, they'll make that pretty clear to you before you start."

"Duly noted," Helena said, smiling. Cautiously she reached over, let the tips of her left fingertips trail against Myka's thigh. She felt the sweat and pleasant stickiness between her own thighs when they pressed together, recalled the feeling of offering her body up completely to Myka's touch.

"So," Helena said, "You're here with me simply because you want to be?"

"Yes," Myka said. She pushed away thoughts of Claudia's skin rippling, desperate to combust; pushed away memories of a gunshot and lifeless eyes, replacing them with the image of straining muscles and the feel of a beautiful woman's body convulsing around her fingers. "Because I want to be."

Helena shifted, rolling until she was stretched out overtop of Myka, knees planted between parted thighs. "You must think me a terribly selfish lover," Helena said with a playful grin. She trailed her left hand down the inside of Myka's right thigh until her fingertips hooked the soft underside of a knee, coaxing it up over her shoulder. "And we certainly can't have that," she breathed as she leaned down, pressing Myka's legs apart until she could reach her lips in a heated kiss.

Later, sweaty and sated, Myka and Helena lay in a tangle of cheap hotel sheets, catching their breath. Myka propped herself up on an elbow to glance at the clock.

"One-thirty," she said.

Helena had an arm thrown over her eyes. "Do you need to go somewhere?"

Myka grabbed her phone and set an alarm for 6:30. Then she switched off the light by the bed. "Yeah," she said, flopping back down onto the pillow. "Eventually."

Helena woke up to the alarm and then fell asleep again almost immediately. Myka got up and quietly dressed in her discarded clothing. She woke Helena gently, with a murmur of her name and fingers carded through black hair, before she left.

"I have to go," Myka whispered, once Helena had blinked herself awake. "Claudia... she can't know I was here. We shouldn't tell anyone this happened."

Helena nodded. "Of course, darling. Our secret's safe with me." She quirked a lip a little. "I'd tell you to send her my best wishes, but…"

"I thank you on her behalf," Myka said, smiling carefully. She leaned down and planted a chaste kiss on lips that still tasted of her body. "Goodbye, Helena."

"Goodbye, Myka. Travel safely today."

After Myka left the room, Helena crawled out of the disheveled bed they'd shared and slipped into the other bed—the one whose stiff bedspread hadn't been creased and broken in sex, and whose pillows didn't smell like another woman's shampoo—to try to sleep again.

In the third floor corridor, Myka used her second key to open Claudia's door just far enough to let her lean in and hear the girl's deep, heavy breathing in sleep. Then, in her own room, she undressed. Standing naked in the bathroom, she stared at herself in the mirror for long minutes before exhaling sharply and stepping into the shower.

* * *

**For shits n' giggles, I'm stealing a page from hermitstull's (on AO3) book and saying:**

**This chapter includes a reference to one of my favorite queer films. The first person to spot the reference and name the film can give me a prompt for a Bering/Wells one-shot.**

**This fic was a bit of an experiment/challenge for me in terms of POV and narrative voice (call it... unreliable third-person omniscient?). Would love your thoughts/feedback on whether it worked.**


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